natural style traced to no less a founder than Nero, and even the names of the Bridgeman and Brown of the day handed down for his edification.*

years from the maze at Hampton Court, that we delighted in what the mob now scarce admire in a could heartily wish to see a few more such plant- college garden." He little thought how soon ed. Daines Barrington mentions a plan for one sturdy Oxford would follow in the fashion of the in Switzer (Iconographia, 1718) with twenty day, and blunt the point of his period. Still more stops; that at Hampton has but four. A fanciful astonished would he have been to have had his summer-house perched at the top of a high mound, with narrow winding paths leading to it, was another favorite ornament of old British gardens. Traces of many such mounds still exist; but the crowning buildings are, alas! no more. We must own our predilection for them, if it were only that the gilded pinnacle seemed to prefigure to the young idea" Fame's proud temple shining from afar," (it is always so drawn in frontispieces ;) while the hard climbing was a palpable type of the ambition of after years.

The same train of thought is followed out in "The Poetry of Gardening”—

Who, to whom the elegance and gentlemanliness and poetry-the Boccaccio-spirit-of a scene of Watteau is familiar, does not regret the devastation made by tasty innovators upon the grounds laid out in the times of the Jameses and the Charleses? As for old Noll, I am certain, though I have not a jot for an anthem; he would as lief have sacrificed the of evidence, that he cared no more for a garden than verdant sculpture of a yew-peacock as the timehonored tracery of a cathedral shrine; and his cropeared soldiery would have had as great satisfaction

The snug, smooth bowling-green is another desideratum we would have restored; and gardeners ought to know that the clipt yew hedges which should accompany it are the best possible protection for their flowers; and that there is nothing flowers need so much as shelter, the nursery-grounds, in bivouacking in the parterres of a "royal pleaswhere almost alone these hedges are now retained, aunce" as in the presence-chamber of a royal palace. will testify. Where they already exist, even in a It were a sorrow beyond tears to dwell on the desituation where shelter is not required, and where struction of garden-stuff in those king-killing times. Thousands, doubtless, of broad-paced terraces and yet a good view is shut out, we should prefer cut-trim vegetable conceits sunk in the same ruin with ting windows or niches in the solid hedge to re- their masters and mansions; and, alas! modern moving it altogether. In conjunction with these, taste has followed in the footsteps of ancient fanatiwhat can be handsomer than the iron tracery-work cism. How many old associations have been rooted which came into fashion with the Dutch style, and up with the knotted stumps of yew and hornbeam! of which Hampton Court affords so splendid an And Oxford too in the van of reform! Beautiful as example? Good screens of this work, which on them for the very walks and alleys along which Laud, are St. John's gardens, who would not exchange their first introduction were called clair-voyées, in all the pardonable pride of collegiate lionizing, may be seen at Oxford in Trinity and New Col- conducted his illustrious guests, Charles and Henlege Gardens. Some years ago we heard of a rietta? Who does not grieve that we must now inproposition to remove the latter; the better taste quire in vain for the bowling-green in Christ-church of the present day will not, we think, renew the where Cranmer solaced the weariness of his last scheme. Though neither of these are in the rich confinement? And who in lately reading Scott's Life but must have mourned in sympathy with the flamboyant style which is sometimes seen, there is still character enough about them to assure us, that, leaves," and the yew and hornbeam hedges of the poet over the destruction of the "huge hill of were they destroyed, nothing so good would be put Garden" at Kelso? up in their place. Oxford has already lost too many of its characteristic alleys and parterres. The last sweep was at the Botanic Garden, where, however, the improvements recently introduced by the zeal and liberality of the present professor must excuse it. If any college garden is again to be reformed, we hope that the fellows will have lord, the Elgin of the topiary art, who is buying courage enough to lay it out in a style which is at up all the yew-peacocks in the country to form an Meanwhile the lilacs of once classical and monastic; and set Pliny's ex- avenue in his domain. ample against Walpole's sneer, that "in an age Nonsuch, and the orange-trees of Beddington, are when architecture displayed all its grandeur, all its no more. The fish-pools of Wanstead are dry; purity, and all its taste; when arose Vespasian's the terraces of Moor-park are levelled. Even that amphitheatre, the temple of Peace, Trajan's forum," impregnable hedge of holly"-the pride of Domitian's baths, and Adrian's villa, the ruins and vestiges of which still excite our astonishment and curiosity-a Roman consul, a polished emperor's friend, and a man of elegant literature and taste, *We were surprised, the first time we saw the entrance gates at Althorpe, which are of this description, painted sky-blue and gilt, till by chance we fell upon a passage in Evelyn, who speaks of them (we suppose they are the same) thus colored in his time. The mention of them by him has rendered them classical, and we quite approve of the taste which renews them as he described.

The good taste of the proprietors of Hardwick and Levens still retains these gardens as nearly as possible in their original state; but places like these are yearly becoming more curious from their rarity.

We have heard of one noble but eccentric

this information:-" Ceterum Nero usus est patriæ ru*Tacitus, in the Sixth Book of his "Annals," gives us inis, extruxitque domum, in quâ haud perinde gemmæ et anrum miraculo essent, solita pridem et luxu vulgata, quam arva et stagna et in modum solitudinum hinc sylvæ, inde aperta spatia et prospectus; magistris et machinatoribus Severo et Celere, quibus ingenium et audacia erat, etiam quæ natura denegavisset per artem tentare, et viribus principis illudere." We since learn from "Loudon's Encyclopedia," sec. 1145, that this passage was suggested by Forsyth to Walpole, who promised to insert it in the second edition of his "Essay," but failed to do so.

Evelyn-than which a more glorious and re- London"-" and what place was so fit for that as

the garden-place wherein Adam was set to be the herbalist? Whither did the poets hunt for their sincere delights but into the gardens of Alcinous, of Adonis, and the orchards of the Hesperides? Where did they dream that heaven should be but

all men walke for their honest recreation but thither where the earth hath most beneficially painted her face with flourishing colors? And what season of the yeare more longed for than the spring, whose gentle breath enticeth forth the kindly sweets, and makes them yield their fragrant smells?"

freshing object" did not exist under heavenone hundred and sixty foot in length, seven foot high, and five in diameter"-which he could show in his "poor gardens at any time of the year, glitt'ring with its arm'd and vernish'd leaves-the taller standards, at orderly distances, blushing in the pleasant garden of Elysium? Whither doe with their natural corall"—that mocked at "the rudest assaults of the weather, the beasts, or hedge-breaker-even this is vanished without a solitary sucker to show where it once stood. Proof it long was against the wind and "weather," nay, against time itself, but not against the autocratic pleasure of a barbarian Czar. The "beast" and the "hedge-breaker" were united in the person of Peter the Great, whose great pleasure, when studying at Deptford, was to be driven in a wheelbarrow, or drive one himself, through this very hedge, which its planter deemed impregnable! If he had ever heard, which he probably had not, of Evelyn's boast, he might have thus loved to illustrate the triumph of despotic will and brute force over the most amiable and simple affections; but at any rate the history of this hedge weather-grumblers of our island, bears also along affords a curious instance not only of the change of gardening taste, but of the mutability and strangeness of all earthly things.

And what country, we may add, so suited, and climate so attempered, to yield the full enjoyment of the pleasures and blessings of a garden, as our own? Everybody knows the remark of Charles II., first promulgated by Sir W. Temple, "that there were more days in the year in which one could enjoy oneself in the open air in England than in any other portion of the known world." This, which contains so complete an answer to the

with it a most encouraging truth to those "who love to live in gardens." There is no country that offers the like advantages to horticulture. Perhaps there is not one plant in the wide world wholly incapable of being cultivated in England. The mosses and lichens dragged from under the snows of Iceland, and the tenderest creepers of the tropical jungles, are alike subject to the art of the British gardener. Artificial heat and cold, by the due application of steam and manure, sun and shade, hot and cold water, and even ice-mattings, flues in every variety of pit, frame, conservative wall, conservatory, greenhouse, hot-house, and stove, seem to have realized every degree of tem

No associations are stronger than those connected with a garden. It is the first pride of an emigrant settled on some distant shore to have a little garden as like as he can make it to the one he left at home. A pot of violets or mignionette is one of the highest luxuries to an Anglo-Indian. In the bold and picturesque scenery of Batavia, the Dutch can, from feeling, no more dispense with their little moats round their houses than they could, from necessity, in the flat swamps of their native land. Sir John Hobhouse discovered an Englishman's residence on the shore of the Helle-perature from Kamtschatka to Singapore. spont by the character of his shrubs and flowers. Louis XVIII., on his restoration to France, made in the park of Versailles the fac-simile of the garden at Hartwell; and there was no more amiable trait in the life of that accomplished prince. Napoleon used to say that he should know his father's garden in Corsica blindfold by the smell of the earth; and the hanging gardens of Babylon are said to have been raised by the Median queen of Nebuchadnezzar on the flat and naked plains of her adopted country, to remind her of the hills and woods of her childhood.

Why should we speak of the plane-trees of Plato-Shakspeare's mulberry-tree-Pope's willow-Byron's elm? Why describe Cicero at his Tusculum-Evelyn at Wooton-Pitt at Ham Common-Walpole at Houghton-Grenville at Dropmore? Why dwell on Bacon's "little tufts of thyme," or Fox's geraniums? There is a spirit in the garden as well as in the wood, and "the lilies of the field" supply food for the imagination as well as materials for sermons. "Talke of perfect happiness or pleasure, says old Gerarde to the "courteous and well willing reader," from his "house in Holborn, within the suburbs of

But

apart from artificial means, the natural mildness of our sky is most favorable to plants brought from countries of either extreme of temperature; and, as their habits are better known and attended to, not a year passes without acclimatizing many heretofore deemed too tender for the open air. Gardeners are reasonably cautious in not exposing at once a newly-introduced exotic; and thus we know that when Parkinson wrote, in 1629, the larch, and the laurel-then called bay-cherrywere still protected in winter. We are now daily adding to the list of our hardy plants; hydrangeas, the tree-peony, fuchsias, salvias, altromærias, and Cape-bulbs, are now found, with little or no protection, to stand our mid-England winters.

Then we alone have in perfection the three main elements of gardening, flowers apart, in our lawns, our gravel, and our evergreens. It is the greatest stretch of foreign luxury to emulate these. The lawns at Paris, to say nothing of Naples, are regularly irrigated to keep up even the semblance of English verdure; and at the gardens of Versailles, and Caserta, near Naples, the walks have been supplied from the Kensington gravelpits. It is not probably generally known that

among our exportations are every year a large gorgeousness and lustre of more tropical flowers, we are more than compensated by the delicacy and variety of their perfume; and just as our woods, vocal with the nightingale, the blackbird, and the thrush, can well spare the gaudy feathers of the macaw, so can we resign the oncidiums, the cactuses, and the ipomaas of the tropics, for the delicious fragrance of our wild banks of violets, our

the passing whiff of a hawthorn bush, a clover or bean field, or a gorse-common.

feature in a land where everything was new to her. Long may they so continue! It is a trait of which England may well be proud; for it speaks-would we could trace it everywhere!-of peace, and of the leisure, and comfort, and contentedness of those who "shall never cease from the land."

quantity of evergreens for the markets of France and Germany, and that there are some nurserymen almost wholly engaged in this branch of trade. This may seem the more remarkable to those who fancy that, from the superiority of foreign climates, any English tree would bear a continental winter; but the bare appearance of the French gardens mostly composed as they are of deciduous lilies-of-the-valey, and our woodbine, or even for trees, would soon convince them of the contrary. It is not the severity or length of our December nights that generally destroys our more tender ex- With such hedgerow flowers within his reach, otic plants, but it is the late frosts of April and and in so favorable a climate, it is not to be wonMay-those "nipping frosts," which, coming on dered that the garden of the English cottager has after the plant has enjoyed warmth enough to set the been remarked among our national distinctions. sap in action, freeze its life-blood to the heart's These may be said to form the foreground of that core, and cause it to wither and die. The late peculiar English scenery, which is filled up by our winter of 1837-8 proved this fact distinctly, which hedge-rows and our parks. The ingenious authorhad hardly been sufficiently remarked before. ess of "Leila in England”* makes the little newThat year, which cut down even our cypresses, landed girl exclaim for the want of "fountain-trees" and china-roses, and from which our gorse-fields and " green parrots." This is true to nature-but have hardly yet recovered, while it injured nearly not less so the real enthusiasm of Miss Sedgwick, every plant and tree on south walls and in shel- on her first arriving in England, at the cottage-gartered borders, and in all forward situations, dens of the Isle of Wight. Again and again she spared the tenderest kinds on north walls and ex-fixes upon them as the most pleasing and striking posed places; and in Scotland the destruction was hardly felt at all. It was the backwardness of their growing state that saved these plants; and the knowledge of this fact has already been brought to bear in several recent experiments. The double yellow rose, for instance, one of the most delicate of its class, is now flowered with great success in a northern exposition. It has led men also to study the hybernation of plants-perhaps the most important research in which horticulturists have of late engaged; and it has been ascertained that this state of winter-rest is a most important element in their constitution; but no doubt it will also be found that-as the dormouse, the sloth, the snake, the mole, &c., undergo a greater or less degree of torpidity, and some require it not at all-so in plants, the length and degree will vary very much in different species, and according to their state of artificial cultivation. As a general rule, young gardeners must take heed not prematurely to force the juices into action in spring, nor to keep them too lively in winter, unless they are well prepared with good and sufficient protection till all the frosts are over. The practical effect of these observations will be, that many plants which have hitherto only been cultivated by those who have had flues and greenhouses at their command, will now be grown in as great or greater perfection by those who can afford them a dry, though not a warm shelter. One instance may serve as an example; the scarlet geranium, one of the greatest treasures of our parterres, if taken up from the ground in autumn, after the wood is thoroughly ripened, and hung up in a dry room, without any soil attaching to it, will be found ready, the next spring, to start in a new life of vigor and beauty.

One characteristic of our native plants we must mention, that if we miss in them something of the

66

We would make gardens in general a test of national prosperity and happiness. As long as the British nobleman continues to take an interest in his avenues and hothouses-his lady in her conservatories and parterres-the squire overlooks his laborers' allotments-the "squiresses and squirinas" betake themselves and their flowers to the neighboring horticultural show-the citizen sets up his cucumber-frame in his back-yard-his dame her lilacs and almond-trees in the front court-the mechanic breeds his prize-competing auriculas-the cottager rears his sun-flowers and sweet-Williams before his door-and even the collier sports his 'posy jacket"-as long, in a word, as this common interest pervades every class of society, so long shall we cling to the hope that our country is destined to outlive all her difficulties and dangers. Not because, like the Peris, we fight with flowers, and build amaranth bowers, and bind our enemies in links of roses-but because all this implies mutual interest and intercourse of every rank, and dependence of one class upon another-because it promotes an interchange of kindnesses and favors -because it speaks of proprietors dwelling on their hereditary acres, and the poorest laborer having an interest in the soil; because it gives a local attachment, and healthy exercise and innocent recreation, and excites a love of the country and love of our own country, and a spirit of emulation, devoid of bitterness; because it tells of wealth wisely spent,

*This is a pleasing continuation of her "Leila, or the Island." All Miss Tytler's books for children are worthy of being generally known.

had their own little garden, where they knew every flower, because they were few; and every name because they were simple. Their rosebushes and gilliflowers were dear to them, because themselves had pruned, and watered, and watched them-had marked from day to day their opening buds, and removed their fading blossoms-and had cherished each choicest specimen for the posy to be worn at the christening of the squire's heir, or on my lord's birthday.

and competence widely diffused, of taste cultivated, | terraces, or strolled along the arched and shaded and science practically applied; because, unlike alleys" of our old manor-houses, Napoleon's great lie, it does bring "peace to the cottage," while it blesses the palace, and every virtuous home between those wild extremes; because it bespeaks the appreciation of what is natural, and simple, and pure; teaches men to set the divine law of excellence above the low human standard of utility; and because, above all, in the most lovely and bountiful of God's works, leads them up to him that made them, not in a mere dumb, inactive admiration of his wonderful designs, but to bless him that he has given them pleasures beyond their actual necessities; the means of a cheerful countenance, as well as of a strong heart.

Still more-because-if ours be not too rude a step to venture within such hallowed ground-it speaks of a Christian people employed in an occupation, which, above all others, is the parable that conveys the deepest truths to them—which daily reads them silent lessons, if their hearts would hear, of the vanity of earthly pomp, of the beauty of heavenly simplicity, and purity, and lowliness of mind, of contentment and unquestioning faith which sets before them, in the thorns and thistles, a remembrance of their fallen state-in the cedar, and the olive, and the palm-tree, the promise of a better country-which hourly recalls to their mind the agony and the burial of him who made a garden the scene of both, and who bade us mark and consider such things, how they bud, and "how they grow," giving us in the vine a type of his church, and in the fig-tree of his coming.

Again, we would ask those who think that national amelioration is to be achieved by dose upon dose of reform or red-tapery, where should we now have been without our savings-banks, our allotment system, and our cottage gardens? And lest we should be thought to have been led away from flowers to the more general subject, we will add that when we see a plot set apart for a rosebush, and a gilliflower, and a carnation, it is enough for us; if the jasmine and the honeysuckle embower the porch without, we may be sure that there is a potato and a cabbage and an onion for the pot within; if there be not plenty there, at least there is no want; if not happiness, the nearest approach to it in this world-content.

Yes! in the poor man's garden grow,
Far more than herbs and flowers;
Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind,
And joy for weary hours.

In a like strain the wise and good author of "Human Life" beautifully says―

I would not have my garden too extended; not because flowers are not the most delicious things, speaking to the sentiments as well as to the senses, but on account of the intrinsic and superior value of moderation. When interests are divided, they are not so strong. Three acres of flowers and a regiment of gardeners bring no more pleasure than a sufficiency. Besides which, in the smaller possession there is more room for the mental pleasure to step in and refine all that which is sensual. We become acquainted, as it were, and even form friendships, with individual flowers. We bestow more care upon their bringing up and progress. They seem sensible of our favor, absolutely to enjoy it, and make pleasing returns by their beauty, health, and sweetness. In this respect a hundred thou-sand roses, which we look at en masse, do not identify themselves in the same manner as even a very small border; and hence, if the cottager's mind is properly attuned, the little cottage-garden may give him more real delight than belongs to the owner of a thousand acres. All this is so entirely nature, that give me a garden well kept, however small, two or three spreading trees, and a mind at ease, and I defy the world.

Nor do we find anything contravening this, in Cowley's wish that he might have "a small house and large garden, few friends, and many books." Doubtless he coveted neither the Bodleian nor Chatsworth, and intended his garden to be "large" only in comparison with his other possessions.

It is this unlimited expenditure and unlimited interest which a garden requires, combined with the innocence of the amusement, that renders it so great a blessing-more even than to the cottager himself-to the country clergyman. We must leave to the novelist to sketch the happy party which every summer's evening finds busied on many an English vicarage-lawn, with their trowels and watering-pots, and all the paraphernalia of amateur gardeners; though we may ask the utiliGardening not only affords common ground for tarian, if he would deign to scan so simple a group, the high and low, but like Christianity itself, it from the superintending vicar to the water-carrying offers peculiar blessings and privileges to the poor schoolboy, where he would better find developed man, which the very possession of wealth denies."the greatest happiness of the greatest number," "The Spitalfields weaver may derive more pleasure from his green box of smoked auriculas," than the lordly possessors of Sion, or Chatsworth, or Stowe, or Alton, from their hundreds of decorated acres ; We would have our clergy know that there is no because not only personal superintendence, but ac- readier way to a parishioner's heart-next to visittual work is necessary for the true enjoyment of a ing his house, which, done in health and in sickgarden. We must know our flowers, as well as ness, is the keystone of our blessed parochial system buy them. Our great-grandmothers, who-before-than to visit his garden, suggesting and superinthey were great-grandmothers-" flirted on the sunny tending improvements, distributing seeds, and slips,

than among those very objects and that very occupation where utility is not only banished, but condemned.

books as would be useful for his limited domain. And many a poor scholar, in some obscure curacy, out of the way of railroads and book-clubs,

and flowers, and lending or giving such gardening and the naming them carries us back to one of the highest privileges of our first parents. The offspring becomes our own gyor; which, according to Aristotle claims the highest degree of our love. We should feel that, in leaving them, we were leaving friends, and address them in the words of Eve, O flowers,

In life's stillest shade reclining,
In desolation unrepining,
Without a hope on earth to find
A mirror in an answering mind,

has made the moral and intellectual wilderness in
which he is cast bloom for him in his trees, and
herbs, and flowers; and if unable, from the nar-
rowness of his means and situation,

To raise the terrace or to sink the grot, has found his body refreshed and his spirits lightened, in growing the salad to give a relish to his simple meal, and the flower to bedeck his threadbare button-hole-enabled by these recreations to bear up against those little every-day annoyances which, though hardly important enough to tax our faith or our philosophy, make up in an ill-regulated or unemployed mind the chief ills of life.

Pope, who professed that of all his works he was most proud of his garden, said also, with more nature and truth, that he "pitied the man who had completed everything in his garden." To pull down and destroy is quite as natural to man as to build up and improve, and this love of alteration may help to account for the many changes of style in gardening that have taken place. The course of the seasons, the introduction of new flowers, the growth of trees, will always of themselves give the gardener enough to do; and if the flower garden is perfect, and there is a nook of spare ground at hand, instead of extending his parterres, which cannot be kept too neat, he had better devote it to an arboretum for choice trees and shrubs; or take up with some one extensive class-as for a thornery or a pinery; or make it a wilderness-like mixture of all kinds. Such ground will not require mowing more than twice or thrice in the year, and will afford much pleasure, without much labor and expense. If there is a little damp nook or dell, with rock-work and water at command, let it by all means be made a fernery, for which Mr. Newman's book will supply plenty of materials.

My early visitation and my last
At even, which I had bred up with tender hand,
From the first opening bud, and gave ye names,
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?
Par. Lost, xi.

We cannot but admire the practice of the Church of Rome, which calls in the aid of floral decorations on her high festivals. If we did not feel convinced that it was the most bounden duty of the Church of England at the present moment, to give no unnecessary offence by restorations in indifferent matters, we should be inclined to advocate, notwithstanding the denunciations of some of the early fathers, some slight exception in the case of our own favorites. We shall not easily forget the effect of a long avenue of orange-trees in the cathedral of St. Gudule at Brussels, calling to mind as it did the expression of the psalmist "Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God." The white lily is held throughout Spain and Italy the emblem of the Virgin's purity, and frequently decorates her shrines; and many other flowers, dedicated to some saint, are used in profusion on the day of his celebration. The pak-leaf and the palm-branch have with us their loyal and religious anniversary, and the holly still gladdens the hearts of all good churchmen at Christmas-a custom which the Puritans never succeeded in effacing from the most cant-ridden parish in the kingdom. Latterly, flowers have been much used among us in festivals, and processions, and gala-days of all kinds-the dahlia furnishing, in its symmetry and variety of coloring, an excellent material for those who, perhaps, in their young days sowed their own initials in mustardand-cress, to inscribe in their maturer years their sovereign's name in flowers. Flowering plants and shrubs are at the same time becoming more fashionable in our London ball-rooms. No dread of "noxious exhalations" deters mammas from decorating their halls and staircases with flowers of every hue and fragrance, nor their daughters from braving the headaches and pale cheeks, which are said to arise from such innocent and beautiful causes. We would go one step further, and replace all artificial flowers by natural ones, on the dinner-table and in the hair. Some of the more amaranthine flowers, as the camellia and the hoya, which can bear the heat of crowded rooms, or those of regular shapes, as the dahlia and others, would, we are sure, with a little contrivance in adjusting To produce new seedling varieties of one's own, and preserving them, soon eclipse the most artistiby hybridizing and other mysteries of the priests of cal wreaths of Natier and Forster, and we will venFlora, is indeed the highest pleasure and the deep-ture to promise a good partner for a waltz and for est esotericism of the art. The impregnating them life to the first fair débutante who will take courage is to venture within the very secrets of creation, to adopt the natural flower in her "sunny locks."

But we are straying too far from our immediate subject of flower gardens and flowers, and with a few more remarks upon the latter, we must bring this dissertation to a close; otherwise we should have something to say of the unique beauties of Redleaf, and the splendid Italian garden lately designed at Trentham by the genius of Mr. Barry; something more, too, of the gorgeous new importations which every day is now bringing, some for the first time, into blossom. We are even promised new varieties of orchideous plants from Mr. Rollisson's experiments in raising seedlings for the first time in this country.